they was voting to picket the track for a mile each way when along come
the four-thirty-two way freight. It had slowed up some making the grade,
and while they watched it what should dart out from a bunch of scrub oak
but the active figure of Wilfred Lennox. He made one of them iron
ladders all right and was on top of a car when the train come by, but
none of 'em dast jump it because it had picked up speed again.

"They said Wilfred stood up and shook both fists at 'em and called 'em
every name he could lay his tongue to--using language so coarse you'd
never think it could have come from a poet's lips. They could see his
handsome face working violently long after they couldn't hear him. Just
my luck! I'm always missing something.

"So they come grouching back to the clubhouse and I took 'em home to
breakfast. When we got down to the table old Judge Ballard says: 'What
might have been an evening of rare enjoyment was converted into a
detestable failure by that cur. I saw from the very beginning that he
was determined to spoil our fun.'

"'The joke is sure on us,' says Ben Sutton, 'but I bear him no grudge.
In fact, I did him an injustice I knew he wasn't a poet, but I didn't
believe he was even a hobo till he jumped that freight.'

"Alonzo was out in the hall telephoning Henrietta. We could hear his
cheerful voice: 'No, Pettikins, no! It doesn't ache a bit. What's that?
Of course I still do! You are the only woman that ever meant anything to
me. What? What's that? Oh, I may have errant fancies now and again, like
the best of men--you know yourself how sensitive I am to a certain type
of flowerlike beauty--but it never touches my deeper nature. Yes,
certainly, I shall be right up the very minute good old Ben